This invention relates to medium-caliber automatic firearms with a high rate of firing, particularly but not exclusively intended for equipping aircraft, and featuring a belt-fed cylinder supplied via a star-shaped feed mechanism. Such firearms, which can be single- or dual-barrelled, are gun gas actuated and electrically energized.
Automatic firearms of the type involved must be capable of delivering short bursts with a high rate of firing reached from the very first rounds in order to engage extremely swift targets with a satisfactory hit probability. Very high burst firing rates are achieved using a single multi-barrel gun or several single- or dual-barrel guns installed on a common platform.
Named after their inventor, single multi-barrel guns are typically of the "Gatling" type. They feature n barrels associated with as many bolts housed in a gun rotor.